"Isn't it beautiful," she marvels, holding up a photograph of a couple, posing naked to show off the full splendour of their all-over-the-body tattoos.

Behind her, technicians are installing a replica of a fully working tattoo parlour.

In another corner of the room a frame is being erected which will provide a private home for more extreme photography.

Surrounded by all of this Denby sits on one end of a chaise longue, reaches into her bag, and one can't help but wonder at what she will produce from it. The answer is a pair of knitting needles.

As she starts to knit, a technician shouts over: "Very rock and roll, Joolz".

The clacking and knit one, purl one-ing of Denby's needles does sit wildly at odds with the scene around her. In answer to this jibe Denby shouts back: "I've been in rock and roll for 30 years," before turning to me and adding: "I've played to audiences of 50,000 and appeared at every major European festival. And knitting is incredibly useful."

It is not knitting needles, but the smaller and infinitely more painful tattooist's needles that are occupying Denby's thoughts.

In 2003 she was asked by the director of Bradford museums and galleries if she wanted to curate an exhibition at Cartwright Hall.

"I'm sure they were thinking that I would bring in a different sort of audience and it's always very important to do that," says Denby.

A spokesman for the gallery agrees Denby's exhibition is sure to bring in "a very different kind of visitor".

When she first began working on the exhibition, Denby wanted to explore tattooing as an art form, but this soon morphed into a desire to look at body modification. Denby says: "Body modification has been around for centuries. High heels, corsets, cosmetic surgery – I wanted to use the exhibition to explore why."

To this end the exhibition is accompanied by a series of talks, with fashionistas who will present a lecture on corsetry, to surgeons from the Yorkshire Clinic who will talk about cosmetic surgery.

The exhibition will also explore the taboo of the tattoo. Denby insists that tattooed people are a group discriminated against, despite, she says, making up more than half the population.

Denby was a little girl when she saw her first tattoo.

"I remember thinking it was so amazing and beautiful that this person had turned their body into a piece of art and that it would be on them forever," she says. "I thought it was so special."

How special is revealed when Denby takes off her cardigan to reveal full-sleeves – tattoos which completely cover both arms from her shoulders to her wrists.

A Celtic band on her left arm was the first tattoo, but that was followed by all kinds of intricate patterns and several quotes on her right arm, one which proclaims "Justice for All". Another is the final line from the Dylan Thomas poem: "Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light."

Denby says she could have filled Cartwright Hall twice over with exhibits. As she is limited to two rooms she has been forced to whittle down the show to a few key exhibits.

One of the exhibitions appears on the front of this week's Culture magazine. The tattooed, pierced face is a centrepiece of the exhibition. While it may look like a man, it is a sculpture by Sheffield artist Anthony Bennett.

The sculpture is of The Great Omi, an Oxford-educated soldier called Horace Ridler who turned himself into a walking exhibition who travelled the world showing his tattoos and extreme piercings.

Denby says: "He is absolutely beautiful.

"But the exhibition is about more than just beauty. I wanted to explore the mass prejudice that still exists against tattooed people. But why should someone be prejudiced against just because they want to have a piece of art on their body?."

The Body Carnival, Cartwright Hall, Bradford, tomorrow to November 30.